Call centers embody capitalism’s centerlessness yet fail to undermine faith in its efficiency

Evidence

The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 131

Categorization

• SEED: A strong piece could trace how the call center — the universal shared experience of late capitalist dysfunction — functions as a perfect controlled experiment showing why lived failure never disconfirms systemic ideology.
• XREF: connects to: Call centers give consumers their only direct experience of capitalism’s centerlessness — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 131; Call centers reveal Capital’s systemic inefficiency as a profit fixation — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 131; Widespread service failures fail to unsettle faith in capitalist efficiency — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 131 (+3 more)

Related

• Call centers give consumers their only direct experience of capitalism’s centerlessness (similarity 0.96)
• Call centers reveal Capital’s systemic inefficiency as a profit fixation (similarity 0.95)
• Call centers give consumers their most direct experience of capital’s centerlessness (similarity 0.92)
• Widespread service failures fail to unsettle faith in capitalist efficiency (similarity 0.88)
• Capital’s center is missing yet still posited as a responsible agent (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Widespread service failures fail to unsettle faith in capitalist efficiency #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 131
• Call centers give consumers their most direct experience of capital’s centerlessness #qualifies (0.90) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 132
• Call centers give consumers their only direct experience of capitalism’s centerlessness #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 131
• Call centers reveal Capital’s systemic inefficiency as a profit fixation #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 131
• The centerlessness of capitalism is unconsciously unbearable and disavowed #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 130
• Capitalism has no center, only entities incapable of responsibility #exemplifies (0.75)